Feinstein and Cruz Fight About Guns

“I am not a sixth grader,” Senator Dianne Feinstein told Ted Cruz in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Thursday. “I am reasonably well-educated, and I thank you for the lecture.” She looked, really, like she might throw some water in his face. So did Senators Leahy and Schumer, who were on either side of her. They were there to vote on an assault-weapons ban; it got out of committee by a vote of ten Democrats for, eight Republicans against. Before it did, Cruz found time for a bit of sophistry. He noted that the bill listed “particular firearms that, if this bill were passed, Congress would deem prohibited. It seems to me that all of us should begin as our foundational document with the Constitution.” He explained to Feinstein that the Second Amendment gave people the right to bear arms, in a tone that suggested that she might not have heard about it. Would she, he asked, alter the First or Fourth Amendments “only to the following books…Likewise, would she think that the Fourth Amendment prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures properly apply only to the following specified individuals.” Feinstein:

Let me just make a couple of points in response—one, I’m not a sixth grader, Senator, I’ve been on this committee for twenty years. I was a mayor for nine years. I walked in, I saw people shot. I’ve looked at bodies that have been shot with these weapons. I’ve seen the bullets that implode… Look, there are other weapons. I’m not a lawyer, but after twenty years, I’ve been up close and personal to the Constitution. I have great respect for it. This doesn’t mean that weapons of war…and the Heller decision clearly points out three exceptions, two of which are pertinent here. And so you know, it’s fine you want to lecture me on the Constitution. I appreciate it. Just know I’ve been here for a long time.

She noted that there were a lot of guns that people could still carry (“Do they need a bazooka?”). She added, “So I come from a different place than you do.”

Cruz, with no betrayal of embarrassment, said that he didn’t doubt “her sincerity or her passion. At the same time, I note that she has not answered my question.” As he and Feinstein started interrupting each other about books, Leahy, the Committee Chairman, jumped in:

LEAHY: I appreciate that discussion of books. I know that you have that in your state of Texas, where your educational boards tell people what books they should and shouldn’t read in schools, something that we would not do in Vermont.

CRUZ: Mr. Chairman, I, I appreciate your, your acknowledging that the state of Texas allows books.

A Texas-Vermont showdown—can it be that Cruz is not entirely endearing himself to his colleagues? Charles Schumer, at this point, was practically bouncing up to say “Child pornography books!”—as an example of limits. Feinstein reiterated the point she had made by citing Heller in the first place: “It’s obvious that there are different tests for different amendments.” (And Cruz, for all his pedantry, gave a truncated and ahistorical version of the Second Amendment.)

Cruz, though, returned to the idea that prohibiting particular guns was comparable to designating “particular individuals who are not protected by the Bill of Rights.” One wouldn’t mind a discussion of people not protected by the Fourth or any other Amendment (for instance, when it comes to drones), including one engaging Feinstein, but that is quite a leap: the guns in one example have been replaced by people in the other. What Cruz is talking about is not a right to bear arms but the right of specific gun models to be borne. (Or, perhaps, from the point of view of the gun manufacturers, to be bought.) With that, he reveals a great deal about the Constitutional perspective of the pro-gun lobby.

The assault-weapon ban, for all the fighting, will likely not become law. It is what counts as utopian in this Congress, as sensible as it is. It’s been three months since the Newtown shooting, which left twenty children and seven adults dead. The question is whether the decisive moment in our debate about guns is behind us or ahead of us. On Tuesday, legislation that would bring about some small changes—expanding background checks, making it a crime to lie your way around gun laws—also made it out of the Judiciary Committee. No Republicans voted for the background-check measure, either, even though all it does is make it so that no one can buy those assault weapons from a registered gun dealer and then turn around and sell them in the parking lot to someone who can’t pass a background check. Still, universal background checks are thought to at least have a chance of getting through—a better one in the Senate than in the House, but a chance. So that is what this moment comes down to: getting one small, rational measure made into law before the fading of the outrage and the memory of twenty children who will never be sixth graders.

Amy Davidson Sorkin, a staff writer at The New Yorker, is a regular contributor to Comment for the magazine and writes a Web column in which she covers war, sports, and everything in between.